


Building Happily Ever After, One Brick At A Time

by WinterTheWriter



Series: One Brick At A Time [10]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Doctor Who (2005), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Aging, Angst, Bittersweet, Euthanasia, Growing Old, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-02
Updated: 2018-10-02
Packaged: 2019-07-23 16:08:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16162301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WinterTheWriter/pseuds/WinterTheWriter
Summary: Steve, Bucky, and Koschei enjoy the rest of their lives together until the very end.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, folks. This is it. This is really it. This is the last EVER installment in this universe, spin-off or otherwise. It is bittersweet as hell but I really think it ends where it should. Thank you to everyone who has read or will read this. It truly means everything to me that you got this far, and (I'm assuming) liked the first series enough to read further. This spin-off has been in the works since before I finished writing the original so this is all pretty crazy. You might notice some similarities for the first finale but please read on regardless -- everything is a little different before it gets really really different! Please share your thoughts with me and grab your tissues.
> 
> Warnings for this update: character death, and a shitload of it. Suicide as euthanasia and a display of autonomy. 
> 
> For the last and final time....
> 
> Enjoy!

They all go to many more funerals together. 

It never gets easier. 

Tony, unfortunately, goes first. Years of drinking and partying catch up with him even as he leaves that life behind, sticking to sobriety until the end. He passes away at 72, Rhodey holding his hand in the hospital as his organs shut down for their final rest.

Somehow, JARVIS cries. 

Surprisingly, at least to Steve and Bucky, Koschei cries more than they do. They have the luxury of being ignorant of the domino effect Death has over humanity. 

This is the definite beginning of the end. 

~

Just as dominos within range of each other fall nearly together, Rhodey passes away only two short years after Tony. He has a full military funeral, and every US soldier in SHIELD (Steve and Bucky included) wears full dress uniforms. Cancer, unfortunately, won in the end. 

He’d turned to smoking after Tony’s death. 

~

They have a full ten years after Rhodey’s death before they go to another funeral. 

Bruce’s, this time. He is 85. He is ready. Old age had made it harder to control the Hulk, and brittle bones meant that he came back to himself broken and in agony every time. His last invention is his own euthanasia — an easy pill.

No one stops him. They all respect him too much for that. 

~

Fury dies in his sleep, at the age of 92. 

Natasha sobs openly for the first time. 

~

Natasha herself, fittingly, dies in the line of duty. Koschei thinks her death is the least fair of all, because she’s a super-soldier just like Steve and Bucky. She’s caught in an explosion too extreme and concentrated to escape from, but she dies saving the world single-handedly. Bucky had already been halfway to the building to save her when the explosion went off, and Steve has to tackle him to the ground to keep him from running in anyways. 

It reminds Koschei, more clearly than ever, how any mission can be their last.  
~

Clint goes next, unwilling and fighting and clawing away every step. He keeps fighting in Natasha’s honor, longer than anyone expected, but he was in his late 80s and still climbing up into the rafters, always the Hawk. All it takes is one misstep and one fatal fall. 

His last words are, “Not yet, not yet,” and Steve and Bucky have to drag Koschei away from his body, who wouldn’t stop CPR even after he’s long gone. 

~

Last to go is Sam, who notices his hands won’t stop shaking at the age of 74. Parkinson’s takes him at 90 exactly, Koschei and Steve sitting on either side of him as Bucky sits at the foot of the bed, the four of them cracking jokes and fake-smiles because Sam tells them he doesn’t wanna die depressed. There’s no heart monitor, no hospital, no “serious shit,” as Sam puts it. Sometime in, Sam just stops laughing at Steve’s jokes. 

Steve has to be sedated and carried out. 

~

And then, it’s only them left. Koschei, Steve, and Bucky — the last Avengers. Thor resigns after Jane’s death, ready to settle in as the true King of Asgard and live the rest of his days in his father’s footsteps. Stark Tower becomes a monument — unlived in but maintained. Steve outright refuses to let it become a museum, and he keeps all the rights to it Tony leaves him in his will. JARVIS looks over it like a cybernetic ghost, preparing it in the vain hope for future inhabitants. The triad retires to a nice apartment in Brooklyn, two blocks from where Steve was born. Bucky says it’s also just down the street from the first apartment they’d shared together, adding another layer of nostalgia and sugar-sweetness.

Everything is…quiet. No aliens are invading, no humans come across trouble they cannot solve themselves, and to most of the world the Avengers become almost legend and, in a strange, roundabout way that makes Koschei’s stomach turn, fiction. 

It’s only been 45 years since Koschei joined the team.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They get to grow old together, and that's all they've ever wanted.

The serum, unfortunately, is not magic. It can’t do everything; there simply comes a point where Nature wins and beats the accomplishments of man, just as it always has and presumably always will. Age is the only thing, including death, that will always be incurable. Even if the signs of aging never show, even if death never comes, we still grow older with every second that passes, we still bear the weight of time on our shoulders. The serum knows this. And so, in a slow, gradual build over the course of fifty years, it hands the reins of Steve Rogers’ and Bucky Barnes’ body back over to Nature, not so much wearing off as it does gently bow and step away. 

It’s fine, according to them. They didn’t want to live forever anyways. 

 

Who would? 

~

The first fifty years of their relationship is as blissful as it can be. Sure, there’s struggle and heartache, and fights and lonely nights and days where Koschei wonders if this is why the Doctor always had new companions, and even days where Steve and Bucky wonder the same thing, but every relationship, Koschei reasons, needs weakness to know strength. The hard part of a triad is that, in most fights, /someone/ will inevitably feel ganged up on, and they certainly learn that lesson as the years go by. However, the majority of their time together is effortless and wonderful (and, truthfully, full of some really /fantastic/ sex) and that’s, in the end, what truly matters. 

They love each other. No two ways around it. They love each other and they make each other happier than they’ve ever been in their lives, and they have no regrets. Granted, they have to step around the fact that their triad will become a couple, will become a single eventually, and, well, no one wants to mention how adverse they are to becoming that single. 

But of course it’ll be Koschei.

Which is fine. Koschei is fine with that. Human lives are fleeting and he’s known that, he’s always known that. A wise man once said you can live more in 20 years than in 80, and he was right. But, gods, does it get hard. 

At the nice young age of 150, Steve Rogers finds his first gray hair.

~

“Koschei! Koschei, babe, come here!” Steve /shouts/, far louder than necessary, and Koschei curses as he jolts up from bed and runs to the bathroom, all wild-eyed and scared.

“What?! What, what is it?!” he pants. Steve turns to him from staring into the mirror and pouts, holding up the front curl of his hair. Bucky is sitting on the closed toilet lid, glaring sleepily at the two of them as he clips his toenails. 

“I have a gray hair! Me! I can’t get old yet!” With an exasperated sigh, Koschei relaxes and walks over to him, batting Steve’s hand out of the way to look himself. And there, just one little strand, but…gray. Definitely gray. 

“Huh.” 

“It’s gray, isn’t it? Am I seeing things?”

“God, you’re such an asshole, Steve,” Bucky snarks, standing up to throw out his clippings and nudge Steve’s shoulder. “I found my first gray hair like, a year ago.”

“Yeah, but you look /good/ with it.”  
“You have /one singular gray hair/.”

“/Both/ of you look great with gray hair. …Oh, gods, I’m a trophy boyfriend now.” Koschei makes his best disgusted look until Steve pushes him and makes him laugh. “Darling, it’s as Bucky said — /one/ gray hair. You’re fine. Still as gorgeous as always.” He very resolutely ignores the knot of panic in his gut, the desperate mantra of /not yet, not yet/ in his head. It was hard enough when Bucky got his. Koschei is acutely aware that his serum isn’t as strong as Steve’s. 

“Promise? I don’t look like a grandpa now?” Steve looks at him with big puppy dog eyes and Koschei grins, hands moving to grip his waist. 

“No more than Bucky does,” Koschei hums, dotting little kisses along Steve’s neck. He laughs when Bucky hip-checks him. “Must say, I quite like the idea of having Captain America and the Winter Soldier, silver foxes, all to myself.” 

“Mmm. Don’t tempt me, or I’ll get it dyed gray professionally,” he chuckles, rubbing Koschei’s back. Koschei pauses and pulls back to silently raise an eyebrow at him. Bucky gags. “Okay, no, I won’t,” Steve concedes, and Koschei immediately relaxes before turning to Bucky.

“What do you say, my love? Perhaps you two should take me into the shower and show me how /young/ and spry you are.” 

“Koschei, you’re a goddamn genius.” Bucky is already half out of his clothes, hopping around eagerly.

And then Steve lifts him, just as easily as always, slams him into the shower wall as Bucky crowds in behind him, and they speak no more.

~

Dominos, Koschei muses one night, is a useless, stupid game that should be eradicated from the universe. 

It’s never just one gray hair. 

It never stays that way. 

~

In the middle of the night, 15 years later, Koschei wakes up for no particular reason, and finds that Steve is staring intently at the backs of his hands, furling and unfurling his fists with a pensive look on his face. Bucky is snoring soundly on the other side of him. Koschei yawns and rolls over to him, resting his head on Steve’s shoulder and gently petting Steve’s fist. 

“They look fine, darling,” he mumbles, voice thick with sleep. Steve sighs and kisses the top of his head.

“They look old,” Steve responds, resigned and indignant at the same time. “I look old.” 

This has been happening more and more recently. Koschei never expected Steve to obsess over his own aging more than he does, especially since Bucky seems content to just roll with his body’s changes with barely a raised eyebrow. Tutting, Koschei lifts his head and presses a kiss to Steve’s jaw. “You look gorgeous. And you’re going to drive yourself insane overanalyzing every minuscule change in your body.” 

“I look old,” he repeats, not responding to the affection. Steve, maybe, looks like a well-aging man in his late 50’s. That, in Koschei’s opinion, is nowhere near /old/, especially as Bucky looks closer to 60 now — slightly younger than he looked before he cut his hair. 

Koschei tells him exactly that and Steve harrumphs before wrapping his arms around him, and settling them both back to sleep. 

~

The one saving grace is that both Steve and Bucky keep their minds to the very end. Koschei doesn’t know if he could’ve survived being forgotten like that. 

You cannot build what you do not remember. 

~

Steve and Bucky’s aging stops being an annoyance and morphs into an actual /problem/, an ever-growing thing they cannot ignore, when they are about 185. 

It’s all happening so fast, now. Steve stumbles when he stands, and Bucky holds onto Koschei like he’s a walker rather than a lover, and Steve’s eyes crinkle too much when he smiles even though each and every moment of happiness and love is still just as heartbreakingly beautiful as ever. Bucky’s voice has gone gravelly with age, with that wheezy quality just under the rough. 

It’s per Bucky’s suggestion that Koschei dons the shield and becomes Captain America once Bucky and Steve retire. Koschei spends the time he’s not caring for his partners, caring for his team, inspiring as much hope and change as he can. Instead of hiring someone new, Koschei trains the new members himself, teaching them about resistance and taking action and how to make the world /want/ to become a better place rather than trying to force the changes upon it. He becomes the patriarch of the Avengers, and he’s almost as proud of that as his partners are. 

One night, Koschei comes home from a mission to find Bucky sitting painfully with Steve on the floor, as Steve coughs hoarse into a tissue that comes away red. Koschei can’t help but just stare at them, helpless and hopeless at once. “I won’t outlive you two,” he finally proclaims, still glued to the spot. He’s honestly not sure how his voice came out steady. “I /won’t/.”

His intention is crystal clear. 

Bucky and Steve look up at him, and then at each other, pain and resignation written into every line on their faces, before looking back up. “We know,” Steve says lowly, still weak from his cough. His eyes are wet but he doesn’t argue.

“Yeah, doll,” Bucky agrees, soft and sure. “We know.” And so Koschei sits down on the ground with them, and in silence the triad truly, truly contemplates the end that’s on the horizon, the heartache that’s coming for them, the inevitability of a happy ending’s ending. 

It’s exactly as Koschei predicted and he hates himself for it, like it’s his fault, so much that in a fit of manic terror and rage he almost cuts his own brain out of his head. Against all odds, it is the Master who stops him, emerging from the shadows of his mind to do his duty as Protector for the first and final time. 

He never tells this to them. 

~

It’s only fifteen years later that Steve and Bucky are forced into hospice, unable to care for each other or themselves any longer, and unwilling to let Koschei do it all alone. The nurses tell him it’s close enough for him to start making preparations, so he does. Koschei assembles the Avengers and tells them he’s retiring from the team entirely, forcing himself not to tear up at their too-knowing looks and understanding, sad smiles. 

“No one else is going to be Captain America,” he says sternly, pointing his finger at them. “I mean it. This planet will never have a future if it continues to cling to the past, and you are to set an example of how to stop that from happening. I will be locking up the suit and the shield, and if any of you respect me, or him, in the slightest, you will leave it there for the rest of eternity. /None/ of you should be anyone but yourselves, do you hear me? No more passing the metaphoric ring through anything but family. Being yourself — being /only/ yourself — is the most important rebellion there is.” 

The team mumbles their agreement and acknowledgments and Koschei feels a weight lifted. Once he says his goodbyes, he packs up what’s left of their apartment, sells ownership of it back to the landlord, and redistributes the assets the three of them accumulated over the years. He keeps nothing but pictures and memories and he moves into the hospice, into his partners’ room, only two weeks after they do. 

It’s settled. 

There’s a pill in his pocket, in a little plastic baggy, that was left to him by Bruce in his will. That man always knew more than he should’ve, and this was no exception. Koschei’d found a letter explaining this knowledge alongside the pill when he was clearing out Bruce’s lab — it promises to be painless, strong, more than able to stop him from regenerating, and most importantly, fast. As macabre as it may be, finding this pill and that note felt like Christmas. 

And now, Koschei nestles between Bucky and Steve on their bed (which is actually two pushed together — the nurses are very accommodating, thankfully), trading soft kisses with the two great loves of his life. Bucky and Steve hold each other’s arms around Koschei’s torso, as if they’re hugging through him, and it’s as perfect as this sort of thing can be. 

“Crazy how far we’ve come, huh?” Bucky chuckles, weak and quiet as he kisses Koschei’s temple. Steve hums his agreement into Koschei’s shoulder. 

“I think we’ve had a pretty good run, all things considered,” Koschei says, hands rubbing up and down the too-bumpy curves of each of their spines. His eyes are dry — it’s not like he’ll have to live without them. 

“Yours doesn’t have to be over, sweetheart,” Steve reminds him gently, and this is as close to a disagreement as they’ve had about the topic. Koschei just smiles at him and kisses his forehead. 

“Mine should’ve been over centuries ago. The life I’ve had with the two of you was…a delightful, beautiful bonus round.” All three of them share a small laugh. “But it’s done now, my loves. I’m done. I’ve done all I could ever want to do, and loved all I could ever want to love.”

“Talkin’ about us, you old sap?” Bucky teases, but it trails off into a wheezing cough that rattles his form. Koschei swallows thickly and holds him closer, nosing the top of his head. 

“‘Course I am,” he answers back. He’s so glad Bucky still flirts like he used to. “I love you both more than I’d be able to express with a thousand more lifetimes.” 

“And we love you with every breath we’ve ever made,” Steve coos softly, his breaths shaky and quiet. 

“More than the air in our lungs and the stars in the sky,” Bucky adds, serious as he’s always been when it comes to what truly matters. Koschei smiles at both of them, happy and in love. 

“We did it, you know,” Steve mentions. “We got to spend our lives building happily ever after.” The mention of that ages-old conversation makes Koschei melt, nuzzling into Steve’s hair. 

“One brick at a time,” Bucky muses, lips brushing the shell of Koschei’s ear. “Damn right.” 

“We did, didn’t we?” Koschei hums, yawning a little between them. The two mumble their agreement, pride shining through them, before they all lapse into silence. 

Twenty minutes later, Steve nudges Koschei from his light doze. “Baby,” he whispers, like he can’t speak any louder, “it’s time.” Koschei jolts a little bit, almost in a panic as he looks wide-eyed and frantic at the two of them, but Bucky shushes him gently and pushes him back down, tangling their legs together.

“Take your medicine, my sweet boy,” Bucky murmurs. “Come take a nap with us.” 

Koschei almost wants to cry, /wants/ to panic and sob and beg for more time, but he looks between them and sees nothing but peace and love and acceptance. Yes, he thinks. It’s time. He sits up just long enough to pull the baggy from his pocket and take out the pill before settling back down, letting his partners wrap around him and each other. Looking at each of them for confirmation, he receives two nods in return, and he can’t help but smile just a little as he downs his pill. 

Some might say he’s giving up, but for the first time in his long life of suicide attempts, Koschei knows this is different. This isn’t giving up, this is stepping down — giving up his claim on life so that the world may grow brighter in his place. At long last, he’s confident he’s a good person, kind and just. At long last, he knows his hands are scrubbed clean. Truly, deeply and truly, he’s ready. 

He, Steve, and Bucky share soft smiles and kisses as they cuddle each other, stroking each other’s skin and basking in the presence of their lovers for the last time. Slowly, easily, like the gentle push of a boat from its dock, they float away into nothingness, content with the knowledge that they lived their best lives, loving each other as intensely as they could.

’Til the end of the line. 

~FIN~


End file.
